The Gazette

In skinning Tillman recently. Senator Spooner did a job that is not done often enough in the U. S. senate. That is why the foul and coarse-mouthed one is so brazen in his talk there and on the lecture platform throughout the country.

So the senate finally got enough of Tillman's coarse talk and made him apologize last week. Well. it's about time. Now let them put a stop for all time to it. It is a pity there is no way to compell him to discontinue punishing the people, of the north particularly. with his alleged lectures.

That Columbus affray caused by a white man and an Afro-American's beating a "butter-in" whiskey-soaked white soldier recruit is no parellel of the Brownsville affray, and even if it was the war department would see to it that it was not "put up" to the president as the Texas riot was.

"Blood is thicker than water" in the war department as everywhere else in the army and the country.

Senator Tillman is one of the most influential public men in the country. He can defeat almost anything he advocates.-Cleveland Plain Dealer.

The only thing that made us a lit-tle fearful that the senate might not pass Senator Foraker's now famous resolution of inquiry into the "Browns-ville. Tex., Affray." Its escape of defeat can only be explained when one remembers that Tillman did not more than half advocate the princi-ples Senator Foraker stood for in his advocacy of the passage of his reso-lution.

The new governor of Alabama has been elected by a vote of sixty thousand. five thousand less than was given Gov. Jelks. This is a smaller vote than is cast in at least two coun-ties of the state of Ohio. Over one hundred thousand whites and one hun-dred and eighty thousand Afro-Amer-ican are disfranchised in that state by "law" contrary to the U. S. consti-tution and still nothing is said or done. This is equally true of other southern states. Has the republican majority in congress any respect for citizen rights and the provisions of the constitution anent them? Ask your congressman.

Two years ago in cases from Texas and Alabama, the U. S. supreme court reversed the decision of the, supreme court of both states and remanded the cases of two convicted Afro-Amer-ican, to hang. The court held that. in all cases in state courts where our people are charged with crime, they are entitled to members of the race on jury, both petit and grand jury This decision is far-reaching and is of great interest. If every Afro-Amer-ican who has been convicted on a criminal charge and sentenced. would appeal his case to the United States supreme court he would get a similar reversal. The supreme court of Mis-sissippi, bowing to the highest tribu-nal's decision, has recently reversed a decision of a lower court, and as a result supervisors of various counties in that state are preparing lists of Afro-Americans as well as whites for petit and grand jury service. some-thing heretofore unknown as far as Afro-Americans are concerned. Good.

There are one hundred and eighty five thousand Afro-American males of voting age in Alabama. This number added to two hundred and thirty-five thousand white males of voting age makes a total of four hundred and twenty thousand. There are no more than three thousand registered Afro-American voters in the state. The Birmingham (Ala.) Age-Herald de-clares that there are one hundred thousand disfranchised whites in the state. This statement, coming from a democratic daily newspaper, cer-tainly the facts are not overstated This is equally true of every state in the south having disfranchisement laws." and nearly all of them have

It certainly is high time that there was an official investigation and other congress legislation rel-ative to the treatment in general of our people in that section. The south has been "let alone" entirely too long already, and it is up to the large re-publican majority in both branches of the congress to take the necessary action to compel it to properly ob-serve all the fundamental laws of the land.